With Cadillactica he’s found his stride by taking new steps. K.R.I.T. isn’t slept on, but he’s proven again that he should have a bigger bandwagon by now.

Throughout RTJ2 [El-P] holds his own rhyming alongside a superior wordsmith.

Whereas a lot of listeners might be tempted to ask themselves if ScHoolboy Q’s latest offering was worth the wait, his remarkable growth also suggests that years of experience is perhaps what births the richest music, especially in a word-heavy genre like rap.

The production is exquisite. A lush, cosmopolitan collection of sounds spread out and allowed to coalesce. The album is quiet, subtle and monastic.

Rapsody evolves on this latest album--increasingly comfortable revealing a wide range of personal facets while developing into an apt storyteller.

As Gangster Rap, Piñata is free of conceptual pretense; it’s a slice more than a thesis. It’s also a new benchmark for Gibbs and may end up as a career calling card. If nothing else, it quickly sounds like one of the year’s best.

Clocking in at 47 minutes, the album is both Tyler, The Creator’s shortest and most cohesive album to date and is full of introspective admissions that logically line up with his public character.

They make poignant soul that’s fresh sounding at all angles. Most importantly, Choose Your Weapon stands on its own as one of the year’s best albums.

Those looking for an album which actively engages the future of music while remembering the imperfect past has much to enjoy with In Colour.

No I.D. and company have helped him make music that’s both uncomfortable and lived-in, and Staples sounds more himself inside of it than ever before.

Black Messiah is ambitious and adventurous, and in that way it delivers wholly on the promise of D’Angelo as an artist.

Renaissance is both backward-looking and forward-thinking. A colorful, euphoric and glittery celebration of what has passed and what is still to come.

Directors of Photography is a top-notch effort. Production and lyrics are both outstanding, and there are few qualms, if none at all.

Nobody’s Smiling is defiant, as full of commanding musicality as it is of Common’s own provocation.

The Hamilton Mixtape is an enthralling musical journey through American history that manages to stay relevant to our country’s turbulent political landscape.

With Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City, Compton's flag bearer unveils a group of songs equally potent individually and collectively, meeting the mainstream and rabid fans in the middle, improbably touching that thinnest slice between mass appeal and mass respect.

It’s powered by honesty that goes beyond any titles fans have come to associate with the venerable spitter. In a career that’s stretched more than 20 years, Michael sees Mike as his most honest self, and it’s his most comfortable role yet.

Although it feels druggy and improvisational at times, the outcome is soberingly great.

Hell Can Wait is Vince Staples’ best short release to date and his true-to-form introduction as a Def Jam artist. It’s proof that he can improve for a new audience without compromising to reach them.

In an era where artists hype up projects that turn out to be nothing but half-baked playlists, 6LACK’s thoughtful embrace of the album format is refreshing. East Atlanta Love Letter is a moody masterpiece that may very well take the artist’s career to new heights.

The project furthers Top Dawg Entertainment's winning streak and marks the formal arrival of a cornerstone for this organization, an interestingly deep thinker whose determination and expanding consciousness seek to uplift and shape the world around him.

Curry has constructed a project that plays to the sonic structures of the era without sacrificing meaningful content in doing so. TA13OO is the culmination of his promise and talent, resulting in Curry’s magnum opus.

A Seat at the Table is her strongest work to date.

Outside of the disappointing “They.Resurrect.Over.New” (featuring Ab-Soul)--which connects conceptually, but sounds less dope doing so--Tetsuo & Youth glistens with maturity and imagination.

A Hip Hop iconoclast that flits between personas, moods and genres, Tyler captures the confusion of 21st century identity on Chromakopia as he quests to find out who he is and where he wants to be.

Kool Herc: Fertile Crescent is at its root empowering, challenging and subversive, most strikingly, it’s simply an incredibly rewarding listen.

With welcome to: OUR HOUSE, Slaughterhouse has somehow managed to improve upon its already-absurd skill set.

In reaching out and grabbing every pop sound that’s been successful in the past half-century of mainstream pop, rolling it tightly in a blunt and setting them ablaze with Abel Tesfaye’s sonorous vocals, this release gets much higher than most anything else released in 2015.